West Virginia Energy
and America’s FutureSecond
district Republican Congresswoman Shelley More Capito held
the “West Virginia Energy and America’s Future” forum on
July 16, 2001. The event, held at Riverside High School
near Belle, was one of several nationwide that Bush the
Lesser’s Dick Cheney helped organize to whip the masses
into frenzied support for the Administration’s "Drill, Mine
and Nuke the Guts Right out of the Planet" national energy
policy.

Rep. Capito faces the TV cameras while OVEC members get
their message across.

Capito's
panel consisted of pretty much anybody whose future wallet
fatness is directly tied to promoting the status quo and
blocking progress toward environmentally safer forms of
energy, such as wind, solar and hydrogen fuel cells. This
was going to be a warm and fuzzy taxpayer-funded Coal cheerleading
session, with a little Oil and Gas thrown in for good measure.
Capito's star speaker was Texas Republican Congressman Joe
Barton, chair of the House subcommittee on energy and air
quality.

Not
surprisingly, no one whose future is in peril from mountaintop
removal had a place on the panel, despite requests to Capito’s
office by an OVEC member and the Untied Mine Workers of
America that a coalfield resident be included on the panel.

Helping
to provide a need for lots more drilling, Capito, Barton
and staff pulled up to the forum’s venue in a SUV. They
had to make their way thru a mock graveyard filled with
mock open coffins representing things we Appalachians have
lost to mountaintop removal—communities, jobs, streams,
forests, topsoil, plants, animals and mountains.

We
handed Capito a citizens’ press package, complete with photos
of the devastation associated with mountaintop removal captioned,
“We won’t be America’s energy sacrifice zone.” We won't
be silenced either.

OVEC member Jack Walldeck, left, tells WV Coal Association
(WVCA) president Bill Raney what he thinks about the association,
while WVCA vice president Chris Hamilton chides the photographer.
Last updated on Wednesday, August 15, 2001